I'm disappointed that random encounters are back and the lack of Pokemon following behind the player. Those were two things from the LGPE games that I hoped would be carried forward. Also, I'm not a fan of the starters. Sobble is decent, but the other two don't look great. Hopefully, their evos are better.
Now, despite all that bitching, the game looks quite pretty. I like the idea of an Britain-esque region. As long as they don't keep interrupting the game with pointless cutscenes and dialogue like SuMo did, I'll be happy.
Random encounters are more balanced than any oother formula they have tried. Hopefully we'll get rustling Grass, bubbles in ponds and other map encounters.
With 800+ pokemon we are probably still too early for them to have working walking designs on parters following you.
It's honestly effot better directed somewhere else (but it's still a cool feature)
The Britain-like region is mostly the only thing that intrigued me but even then, is pretty much a bigger Kalos. Like with Sun/Moon and Ultra S/M, will wait till I dont have other games to anticipate in the near future and try out one of the versions then I guess. Pokemon hasnt hyped or impressed me that much in awhile to get on day 1 or something, but Detective Pikachu movie looks great!
I hope this means there is a valid positive counterpart like actual Pokémon animations for those who got in. Technically this is not a big gameplay change as long as we can eventually pass our older pokemon into other versions
Plastic looking garbage. Looks like Pokemon Go and Stadium had a bastard child.
Go back to the classic look, it doesn't even feel like Pokenon anyone, just another generic jrpg. I'd rather play a fan game like Uranium then this.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
"Junichi Masuda reaffirms that the sheer volume of high quality animations and desire to balance further resulted in the decision to block transfer of some Pokémon"
Whoa, what an incredible kick! Nevermind the plastic art style, the animations are weak af. Even Let's Go or like the 3D Pokemon games on the Wii and such had animations with more life to them than this.
For context, Sword & Shield has been in development for likely 3 years and comes out in 6 months and not even the starter Pokemon has complete attack animations.
Unfortunate to be seeing this and other problems amid all the news of other Nintendo IP's looking on the up and up; even Super Mario Maker 2 going out of its way to listen to fans and addressing criticisms like with the online, while GameFreak just doesn't give a shit and settles for mediocrity. Balancing? Hah.
Enjoy your rushed assembly line games that is Pokemon I guess if you're still into it, but think I'll have to pass on this with all the other titles that have my attention more now.
Nintendo and Gamefreak woke up one day and said "Hey, let's ruin the Pokémon franchise!"
A game series where the ENTIRE APPEAL is in catching every single Pokémon in a generation, including special events you need to physically fly yourself out to, transferring your hoard to the next generation, and doing it all over again.
Good idea, Nintendo, let's just piss all over 20 years of someone's obsession. They're only loyal fans as good as money in the bank, screw them, we're putting an end to "catch me all". (Don't even mention the fact you couldn't transfer every Pokémon in some older games, those were a travesty in and of themselves. Pokémon is about CATCHING.THEM.ALL! Period.)
Bottom line: Nintendo hates you.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
"But you CAN catch them all! From the games Dex. You just ain't transfer them from older games."
Not the point. If you can't have every single Pokémon in existence in your collection, Pokémon becomes pointless. This series is, and always has been, an extended card collection game. People put in a lot of work, time, and money to complete their collection. Those fans have effectively been shat on.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
Nintendo doesn’t own GameFreak, so this is all on GF. But yeah, it’s a travesty and indefensible how Sword/Shield has turned out, especially now that mainline Pokemon has gone to full $60 games, and they look like upscaled 3DS games at best here; piss poor visuals compared to other Switch titles, with GameFreak’s tendency to do the bare minimum. The giant Pokemon battles or dynamax are also the least interesting gimmick introduced by far IMO, and not worth the time/resources if it meant sacrificing the full Pokedex.
The success of the mobile games I suppose are to blame in part for this laziness, but still. Also doesn’t help that GameFreak itself is tired of doing Pokemon at this point, as they would rather do passion/vanity projects instead, but the Pokemon Company should just give the rights to some other team that gives a damn and isn’t burnt out from working on the same franchise for over 20 years. Any other team would probably have better coding and animations than GameFreak too.
Not only that, but Nintendo has allowed preorder cancels for this steaming hot garbage. Only other thing they did for that recently was the Overwatch Switch port when Blizzard cancelled a similar event for it.
Not sure what starter I'm going to choose - leaning towards either Sobble or Grookey. I normally go grass but I don't really care for Grookey's evolutionary chain. I do really dig Inteleon's design though.